THIS week, the Dail is due to debate the Universities Bill, 1996. I welcome the proposal to redesignate UCC, UCD, UCG and Maynooth as independent universities. However, because the Bill also proposes to lay aside the charters and statutes of our universities, muzzle their independence, and supersede existing contracts of employment, it has an importance beyond the sectors to which it is directed.

It mistakes accountability for authoritarianism and gives little credit to either the role or the potential of universities. The Minister for Education has chosen to reject the contributions of the past, ignore the difficulties of the present, and put the future in a straitjacket. In short, the Universities Bill is a worthy metaphor for the current situation of the Labour Party in Government.

Not only does the Bill undermine the independence of our universities but it promotes a culture of dependence and authoritarianism. Fianna Fail believes that the Bill is fundamentally flawed and on return to government we will repeat it.

This decision was not taken lightly. However, last Tuesday, when our front bench agreed on this course of action, the Minister for Education also repudiated her own Bill and told us that she would be generous in accepting amendments. I can't remember when a Government Bill was published with so many reservations and amendments.

Fianna Fail believes that the Bill rides roughshod over the contractual rights and conditions of university workers, retrospectively cancels the status of existing agreements, and proposes arbitrary powers for suspension and dismissal.

Section 22, baldly states the position as follows that a university may suspend or dismiss any employee". Current staff at universities may think they will continue to enjoy the protection of existing legislation, while for future staff security of status will be even more invidious, with all the implications that this will have for academic freedom. The reality is stated in Section 29.3, which says that all statutes that conflict with these proposals "are hereby repealed".

Thy Bill also challenges existing conditions. Has the Minister told the staff of the NUI colleges that the protection they now have under the 1908 Act will be explicitly taken away? Has she told staff at the University of Limerick that a similar protection which they enjoy under the 1991 Act will be taken away?

LITTLE wonder that the Minister is running for cover and that the openness and transparency which she talks of has a hollow ring to it. As with so much that emanates from the Labour Party these days, it is rhetoric masquerading as reality. However, the rhetoric of the Labour Party is not law and it will not protect any university worker from the legally defined provisions for dismissal that are spelled out in this Bill.

I believe that the Minister's cavalier attitude to the role and status of those who work in our universities also compromises these institutions in their freedom of action, freedom of expression and freedom to evaluate their goals. Who is to say that the simple way in which the grounds for dismissal are outlined in this Bill cannot be tied to freedom of express ion.

Who but the Minister is to interpret the so called "stated reasons"

that she will have to suspend governing authorities that, in the case of Trinity, for example, have been governing independently for over 400 years?

The concept of academic freedom is central to the role of a university in healthy democracy. Academic freedom and intellectual life must never be compromised by subservience to a political order. It must never be undermined by the kind of over bearing regulations and legislation that are proposed in this Bill.

The Minister's desire to corral the universities and to undermine their independence is also reflected in the ill's proposals on university governance. Given the amount of money the invested in our universities,

Government must ensure accountability. At present, however, this is comprehensively provided for in the Comptroller and Auditor General (Amendment) Act 1993 and the Higher Education Authority Act of 1971.

Under the terms of the first of these Acts, university accounts are verified by the Comptroller and Auditor General. The president or provost is already the chief accounting officer and is subject to the scrutiny of the Oireachtas Committee on Public Accounts. Under the 1971 legislation, the HEA already exercises extensive external control on salaries, curricular development, student entry requirements, staff numbers and structures, and campus development.

So why are these powers being duplicated and enhanced in this legislation? As the former Taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald, put it three weeks ago, it is to give the HEA "virtually complete domination over every aspect of the universities at the expense of the autonomy that has always been a crucial element of their role in Irish society".

Section 33 of the Bill proposes to give the HEA the power to issue so called "guidelines" to universities. In legal terms, what does this mean? True to the letter and spirit of the Bill, does the Minister intend these guidelines to be compulsory?

If the chief officer refuses an accommodation, can the Minister use the sweeping powers that she has assigned to herself under this Bill to dismiss the president or the provost of Trinity College, Dublin?

A SIMILAR kind of democratic deficit is reflected in the alterations that are being proposed for the internal governance of universities. It is one thing to argue that all those who live, learn and work in the university should have representatives. It is another to argue, as this Bill does, that they should not have the stated right to elect their own representatives as they see fit.

This kind of democratic action is completely denied here. Instead, this Bill proposes that internal governors can be "appointed" by the governing authority "as it thinks fit", and not elected by the relevant constituencies at all. This kind of dictatorship is unacceptable.

For all the provisions that I have already mentioned, the Bill's democratic deficit is perhaps most clearly seen in Section 15.6, whereby the Minister can suspend the chairperson of a governing authority "for stated reasons". This is an unacceptable intrusion into university independence.

Fianna Fail believes that governments should work with universities, not seek to undermine them. They are doing a good job and we should encourage them. This Bill is not the way to do this.

Fianna Fail will oppose this Bill because it supersedes the terms and conditions of current staff and creates arbitrary and summary powers for suspension and dismissal. We also reject the Government's attempts to interfere with the university's right to independence and freedom which is historically based and socially responsible. We believe that any dilution of this age old right could be used to justify further changes, leaving our universities vulnerable to political interference, political expediency and political curbs on its freedom to make decisions in an autonomous way.

With this Bill, the Minister for Education has dealt third level education a very poor hand from a very weak seat. If this Bill is passed, all I can say is that the future of our universities, like that of Icarus, is, at best, very precarious.